An organic EL panel is a self-emission panel in which a single or a plurality of organic EL elements is arranged on a substrate, and is used for various purposes, such as a display and an illumination. An organic EL element has a laminating structure which includes a lower electrode, an organic layer having a light-emitting layer and an upper electrode sequentially laminated from the substrate side, and either one of the lower electrode and the upper electrode functions as an anode while the other one functions as a cathode. A hole injected and transported from the anode and an electron injected and transported from the cathode are recombined in the light-emitting layer, whereby light is emitted. As such, the brightness of an organic EL element is dependent on the magnitude of the current flowing between the anode and the cathode, and the light emitting efficiency of an element is significantly affected by the electrical resistance of a wiring electrode which supplies electricity to the element.
If the electrical resistance of a wiring electrode is high, since the length of the wiring electrode is varied depending on the position where an organic EL element is arranged on a substrate, there is a problem that brightness inconsistency occurs for respective elements due to a voltage drop caused by the current flowing through the wiring electrode. In order to address the problem, it is required to reduce the electrical resistance of the wiring electrode, and thus the wiring electrode is formed by laminating a conductive layer made of low electrical resistance metal or alloy such as Al and Ag on a metal oxide layer having high adhesion with respect to a glass substrate (see patent literature 1 which is shown below).
[Patent literature 1] Japanese laid-open patent publication 2003-36037
The wiring electrode formed on the substrate of an organic EL panel has a cathode wiring electrically connected to a cathode and an anode wiring electrically connected to an anode. These wiring electrodes are pattern-formed on the substrate along with a lower electrode that is a component of an organic EL element before an organic layer is film-formed, and thus the pattern of the wiring electrodes exists on the substrate as an independent pattern before the organic layer is film-formed. If the pattern of the wiring electrode independently existing on the substrate as described above is electrostatically charged, the charged static electricity flows into an element side when the organic layer is film-formed or after the laminating structure of the organic EL element has been formed, which may cause a problem of having an adverse effect on the organic layer and the element structure. Further, when the alignment of a metal mask, which is used for film-forming the organic layer, is performed, there is a problem that the electrostatically charged wiring electrode has an adverse effect on the alignment, thereby making it difficult to perform the alignment and so forth.
An object of the present invention is to address the problems as mentioned above. That is, one of the objects of the present invention is to prevent the static electricity which was charged on the wiring electrode formed on a substrate from having an adverse effect on the organic layer and the element structure of an organic EL element at the stage of manufacturing an organic EL panel.